Resolution of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in a 67 Year Old Female Patient Following Subluxation-Based Chiropractic Care: A Case Study

Dan Yachter DC & Michael Jarry DC

Annals of Vertebral Subluxation Research ~ May 11, 2015 ~ Pages 119-124

 

Abstract
Objective: To present a case study of conservative chiropractic care of a female that presented with multiple health issues and following chiropractic care experienced improvement or resolution of several of these issues, most notably her type 2 diabetes.

 

Clinical Features: A 67 year old female presented with several complaints which included type 2 diabetes mellitus that had been diagnosed by a medical physician when she was 40 years of age. The patient was also found to have several vertebral subluxations throughout her spine, along with postural alterations. She had sought care from several providers with no resolution in any of her complaints.

 

Interventions and Outcomes: The patient received specific chiropractic adjustments according to Diversified technique in the regions of the cervical, thoracic, and lumbar spine and also pelvis. Physical rehabilitation exercises were given to address the patient’s postural alterations found on her initial exam. After receiving chiropractic care the patient obtained several positive results. After four visits, the patient returned to her medical doctor and was able to stop taking insulin for her diabetes. Her blood sugar levels remained within normal limits throughout the rest of her care.

 

Conclusion: The use of conservative chiropractic care was shown in this case to be an effective alternative management for a patient with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Further research is required to understand the efficacy of chiropractic in management of this condition.

 

Key Words: Chiropractic, diabetes, type 2 diabetes, diabetes mellitus, adjustment, spinal manipulation, vertebral subluxation

Most Powerful Blood Pressure Vegetable on Earth

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by: Christian Goodman

Researchers are proving again how one incredible vegetable ends high blood pressure, even more effectively than prescription medications.

And it’s not just alternative health and wellness experts or natural healers who are singing praises…Experts and scientists in Western medicine have joined the choir, to the dismay of pharmaceutical giants.

Researchers in the UK from Queen Mary University in London recently released the results of a study looking at the effect of beets on blood pressure.

What they found was what researchers all over the world have been saying for decades- that beets are the answer to prayers for ending high blood pressure.

The study followed 2 groups of participants: those who had untreated chronic hypertension (high blood pressure), and those who were taking prescription hypertension medications but were unable to drop their blood pressure to a healthy level.

The groups were then divided again, with half the participants from each group drinking 1 cup of beetroot juice every day, and the other half of each group drinking only a placebo.

It was no surprise to see that after 4 weeks of the study, the beetroot group in BOTH sets of participants (untreated and prescription-resistant) ended up with a whopping 8mm/Hg drop in systolic pressure on average.

This was enough to completely normalize blood pressure for most of the participants in the beetroot group. The placebo group saw no change in blood pressure over the 4 weeks.

Not only did the participants wind up with healthier blood pressure, their overall vascular health improved as well: nearly 20% improvement in blood vessel dilation and 10% reduction in arterial hardening. These two factors describe atherosclerosis, a condition known to cause heart attack and stroke.

If you are convinced that beets are the way to go, be advised. The best benefit comes from juicing the raw beet, but it’s not advised to drink it straight. The study participants had a diluted mixture. Drinking it full strength can cause pain and numbness in the throat and esophagus and other problems.

The best way to drink beetroot juice is (after scrubbing everything), run a beet through a juicer with an apple, a couple stalks of celery, and about a cupful of baby spinach or cucumber. This is a healthy way to dilute the beet juice.

For best results, drink it immediately. Storing it causes a reduction in the vitamins and nutrients that are responsible for the blood pressure-dropping benefits.

 

Chiropractic Care of a Down’s Syndrome Patient with Vertebral Subluxation and Strabismus

Robert Sinnott, DC & Elzaan Truter, BS, DC

Journal of Pediatric, Maternal & Family Health – Chiropractic ~ Volume 2015 ~ Issue 1 ~ Pages 46-50

Abstract

Objective: The chiropractic care of a pediatric patient with Down’s syndrome and bilateral convergent strabismus is described. The purpose of this case report is to demonstrate the effects of vertebral subluxation reduction on aberrant ocular presentation and to propose vertebral subluxation mechanisms responsible for these effects.

Clinical Features: The patient is a 4-year old male with Down’s syndrome who was born with convergent strabismus of approximately 15 degrees bilaterally. After surgical intervention, the left eye was corrected to its neutral position. The patient presented with an internally rotated right eye of approximately 15 degrees and no other health concerns in the interest of checking for vertebral subluxation.

Intervention and Outcomes: The patient received a series of contact specific, high- velocity, low-amplitude adjustments to the first cervical vertebra utilizing Gonstead’s cervical chair method. After 2 months of care, both eyes abducted 15 degrees, which meant that the right eye corrected and was now in a central position, whereas the surgically repaired left eye was now divergent 15 degrees.

Conclusion: The results suggest that chiropractic care, specifically atlas subluxation reduction, might be responsible for the correction of convergent strabismus, without surgical alteration, in this case.

Key words: Strabismus, esotropia, Down’s syndrome, pediatric, chiropractic, Gonstead, vertebral subluxation, adjustment

American Medical Association opposes mandatory vaccines: medical ethics statement

 

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) According to the “Informed Consent” section of the AMA Code of Medical Ethics posted at the American Medical Association website, the AMA is fundamentally and unambiguously opposed to mandatory vaccine programs in America. Read the AMA’s Code of Medical Ethics statement here.

A mandatory vaccination policy — forced vaccination of unwilling recipients — is, by definition, a medical intervention carried out without the consent of the patient or the patient’s parents. This directly violates the very clear language in the Informed Consent section of the AMA Code of Medical Ethics which states:

The patient should make his or her own determination about treatment… Informed consent is a basic policy in both ethics and law that physicians must honor, unless the patient is unconscious or otherwise incapable of consenting and harm from failure to treat is imminent.

“Physicians must honor” informed consent

The AMA’s Code of Medical Ethics statement is very clear: “physicians must honor” the policy of informed consent. In fact, the AMA describes this as “a basic policy in both ethics and law” and only makes exception if the patient “is unconscious” or if harm from failure to treat “is imminent.”

Mandatory vaccine interventions are conducted in total violation of this code of ethics. Most unvaccinated children are in a state of perfect health, with no symptoms and no active disease. There is no “imminent” risk of harm from “failure to treat.”

Because the mainstream media is desperately trying to confuse the public about the very definition of “medical consent,” here is the Dictionary.com definition of “consent”:

verb – to permit, approve, or agree; comply or yield (often followed by to or an infinitive)
He consented to the proposal. We asked her permission, and she consented.

Patients deserve an “informed choice”

The AMA’s Code of Ethics statement furthermore says that patients possess a “right of self-decision” and that this right can only be effectively exercised “if the patient possesses enough information to enable an informed choice.”

Nearly all vaccinations are carried out in direct violation of this medical code of ethics because patients are almost never handed vaccine insert sheets, and the very real risks of vaccination are almost never explained to anyone. In fact, virtually the entire medical establishment operates in a state of total denial that any vaccine risks exist at all. This, too, is a striking violation of the AMA’s code of ethics.

It is also an outright abandonment of all logic and medical reality, as every medical intervention comes with some level of risk, even if that risk is small. It is not zero, as is routinely and repeatedly claimed by vaccine fanatics.

Doctors should “respectfully” explain treatment options to patients

The AMA’s Code of Ethics further states “Physicians should sensitively and respectfully disclose all relevant medical information to patients.”

Instead, what we actually see in America today is:

• Belligerent doctors verbally berating patients for asking intelligent, informed questions about vaccine ingredients and vaccine side effects.

• Arrogant doctors threatening to cut off all medical treatment from patients unless they agree to a coerced medical intervention (vaccinations).

• Doctors and hospitals calling law enforcement authorities on families, then staging the state seizure of children while threatening parents with arrest and imprisonment (medical kidnapping).

These actions are so far removed from the AMA’s Code of Ethics that they call into question the very real question of whether the entire medical system has utterly abandoned any shred of medical ethics at all.

A campaign of intellectual bigotry carried out in the name of science

Today, medical obedience to mandatory vaccines is being aggressively demanded by rage-filled doctors, health authorities and media outlets. A vicious campaign of intellectual bigotry has been unleashed against all vaccine skeptics, with malicious tactics such as equating skeptical thinkers who seek to avoid mercury with people who still think the Earth is flat.

There is no question that such malicious tactics against concerned moms are being conducted in total violation of the AMA’s own Code of Ethics, which also states that “The physician’s obligation is to present the medical facts accurately to the patient or to the individual responsible for the patient’s care and to make recommendations for management in accordance with good medical practice.”

This code of medical ethics means doctors may educate patients and even respectfully urge them to follow a particular course of action, but they may not coerce, threaten, intimidate or otherwise verbally berate patients who disagree with their suggested course of action.

Here’s the full statement from the AMA’s Code of Ethics page, section 8.08 – Informed Consent:

The patient’s right of self-decision can be effectively exercised only if the patient possesses enough information to enable an informed choice. The patient should make his or her own determination about treatment. The physician’s obligation is to present the medical facts accurately to the patient or to the individual responsible for the patient’s care and to make recommendations for management in accordance with good medical practice. The physician has an ethical obligation to help the patient make choices from among the therapeutic alternatives consistent with good medical practice. Informed consent is a basic policy in both ethics and law that physicians must honor, unless the patient is unconscious or otherwise incapable of consenting and harm from failure to treat is imminent. In special circumstances, it may be appropriate to postpone disclosure of information, (see Opinion E-8.122, “Withholding Information from Patients”).

Physicians should sensitively and respectfully disclose all relevant medical information to patients. The quantity and specificity of this information should be tailored to meet the preferences and needs of individual patients. Physicians need not communicate all information at one time, but should assess the amount of information that patients are capable of receiving at a given time and present the remainder when appropriate. (I, II, V, VIII)

Because we believe the AMA will, after seeing this investigative story, attempt to alter or revoke this medical ethics document, we are also posting a screen shot of the AMA’s page sourced on February 9, 2015:

Entire mainstream media now urging total abandonment of the AMA’s own Code of Ethics

What else is fascinating about this finding is the realization that the entire mainstream media is almost fanatically screaming for the wholesale abandonment of the very principles of medical ethics endorsed by the AMA in its own words.

Almost everywhere in the media, the public is now being berated and screamed at in the name of “SCIENCE!” while vaccine skeptics are being derided as “kooks” and “nut jobs” because they have questions about vaccines that the vaccine industry refuses to answer. Those reasonable, rational questions include inquiries concerning the toxic effects of vaccine ingredients, the history of faked vaccine research, the CDC scientist’s confession of a vaccine cover-up at the CDC, the admission that many current vaccines are backed by no clinical trials, and even questions about why the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has already paid out billions of dollars in proven vaccine damages at the same time the medical system claims vaccines have never harmed anyone and don’t cause dangerous side effects.

All of this activity carried out in witch hunt fashion by the mainstream media and vaccine fanatics posing as “scientists” is conducted in gross violation of the AMA’s own Code of Ethics, which calls for doctors to respectfully inform patients of their choices, then allow the patient to make their own informed choice.

Six questions for the AMA

Here are six important questions for the AMA:

#1) Will you now denounce the vaccine fanatics who are calling for vaccines to be forced onto people without their consent?

#2) If not, will you revoke the AMA’s Code of Ethics and abandon what have already called a fundamental “patient right” to be informed and make their own decision about medical interventions?

#3) Will you publicly condemn doctors who are using tactics of coercion, verbal abuse, intimidation and threats against patients who have reasonable questions about vaccine safety? If not, will you publicly endorse their tactics and encourage them to be used even more frequently?

#4) If, as you state on the AMA website, “Informed consent is a basic policy in both ethics and law that physicians must honor,” then will you insist that your own AMA members follow this policy? Or is it acceptable that they almost universally violate this policy as part of a “vaccine lynch mob” mentality that has now swept across the minds of the medical profession?

#5) If the AMA does not immediately denounce the widespread vaccine violations of its own Code of Ethics, then what medical ethics does the AMA actually stand for, if any? Are there any limits to the coercion tactics doctors may use against patients to force them into medical treatments demanded by doctors?

#6) If the AMA abandons its own code of medical ethics, then how can patients trust doctors who are AMA members to act with any sense of ethics at all?

Sources for this story include:
[1] http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/physician-re…

A Dangerous Food Additive to Avoid

Andrew Weil, M.D.

Carrageenan is a common food additive that is extracted from a red seaweed, Chondrus crispus, which is popularly known as Irish moss. Carrageenan, which has no nutritional value, has been used as a thickener and emulsifier to improve the texture of ice cream, yogurt, cottage cheese, soy milk and other processed foods.

When I first wrote about carrageenan on this site 10 years ago, I reported that some animal studies had linked degraded forms of it (the type not used in food) to ulcerations and cancers of the gastrointestinal tract. But around that time, a prominent researcher in the field, Joanne K. Tobacman, M.D., now associate professor of clinical medicine at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, conducted studies linking undegraded carrageenan – the type that is widely used in foods – with malignancies and other stomach problems. (Degraded and undegraded carrageenan differ by molecular weight with undegraded carrageenan having the higher weight.)

Over the years Dr. Tobacman has published 18 peer-reviewed studies that address the biological effects of carrageenan and is convinced that it is harmful to human health. In April 2012, she addressed the National Organic Standards Board on this issue and urged reconsideration of the use of carrageenan in organic foods.

In her presentation, Dr. Tobacman said that her research has shown that exposure to carrageenan causes inflammation and that when we consume processed foods containing it, we ingest enough to cause inflammation in our bodies. She explained that all forms of carrageenan are capable of causing inflammation. This is bad news. We know that chronic inflammation is a root cause of many serious diseases including heart disease, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, and cancer.

Dr. Tobacman also told the board that in the past, drug investigators actually used carrageenan to cause inflammation in tissues in order to test the anti-inflammatory properties of new drugs. And she reported further that when laboratory mice are exposed to low concentrations of carrageenan for 18 days, they develop “profound” glucose intolerance and impaired insulin action, both of which can lead to diabetes.

She maintains that both types of carrageenan are harmful and notes that “degraded carrageenan inevitably arises from higher molecular weight (food grade) carrageenan.” Research suggests that acid digestion, heating, bacterial action and mechanical processing can all accelerate degradation of food-grade carrageenan.

All told, I recommend avoiding regular consumption of foods containing carrageenan. This is especially important advice for persons with inflammatory bowel disease.

 

 

Arthritis Relieved Using This Cheap Supplement

 

Posted by: ShellyManning

People who suffer from the extreme pain caused by arthritis are willing to try anything if it can only provide slightest hope of relief!

And the snake oil salesmen are everywhere with expensive, ineffective products.

But how about an inexpensive, readily-available supplement (in most supermarkets) that has actually been proven to provide relief in several studies?

There are different remedies and supplements suggested for arthritis and the results are varied. While some provide relief, others are not recommended as their effectiveness and safety are questionable.

But there is one supplement that is inexpensive and good for overall health, including the joints. It is omega 3 fatty acids, found abundantly in walnuts, soybean oil and cold water fish like tuna and salmon.

The best sources are flax seed and fish oils and supplements can be easily found at drug stores and most supermarkets.

The recommended quantity of the flax seed oil supplement is just 3 – 10 grams daily. It is particularly effective to take supplements that contain both DHA and EPA, both of which are types of omega 3 fatty acids.

The omega 3 fatty acids are well-known for their anti-inflammatory properties. They stimulate production of certain chemicals that control inflammation in joints, blood and tissues.

Several studies have proved that fish oil is definitely effective for improvement in morning stiffness and joint tenderness, when taken regularly. Best of all, they are effective for both osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis.

With recent studies pointing out the serious side-effects caused by prescription drugs for arthritis like Vioxx and Celebrex, it has become more important than ever before to find natural ways to cure the disease.

A recent research has identified substances in DHA and EPA which can provide relief from arthritis pain without any harmful effect. These substances have been appropriately named ‘resolvins’ and ‘protectins’.

One scientific study investigated the effect of intravenous injections of omega 3 fatty acids in patients suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. Just one dose a day, along with prescription medications resulted in a remarkable improvement in symptoms.

Another study based in Brazil, showed that patients who took 3 grams of omega 3 fatty acids for 3 months showed marked improvement in pain intensity, grip strength and fatigue.

All studies point to the fact that consuming flax seed or fish oil on a regular basis is just what arthritis patients need to cut down on the medications with all the nasty side effects.

And it’s not just us, even cats get relief form osteoarthritis with fish oil supplements according to a Netherlands-based study.

Several vaccines are linked to dramatically increased infant mortality. Why? Because they are nothing but toxic concoctions

Sayer Ji
GreenMedInfo
Thu, 19 Dec 2013 17:29 CST

A new study published in the journal Vaccine has brought to light an extremely disturbing though still virtually unreported dark side to immunization campaigns within low-income countries, namely, the observation that infant mortality sometimes increases when the number of co-administered vaccines increases; a finding diametrically opposed to the widely held belief that vaccination is always a life-saving intervention, and that the more vaccines administered to infants the better.

New Study Links DTP and Yellow Fever Vaccines To Infant Deaths

The new observational study from the West African country Guinea-Bissau titled, “Co-administration of live measles and yellow fever vaccines and inactivated pentavalent vaccines is associated with increased mortality compared with measles and yellow fever vaccines only,”[i] opens with a reference to the already consistent observation in the biomedical literature that the co-administration of inactivated diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP) vaccine and live attenuated measles vaccine (MV) increases mortality compared with receiving MV only. [ii] [iii]

The purpose of the new investigation was to determine whether co-administration of pentavalent vaccine (PV) with MV and yellow fever vaccine (YF) had similar negative effects. Both PV and YF vaccines were introduced in Guinea-Bissau in 2008, with PV containing 5 vaccine antigens in one shot (DTP-H. Influenza type B-Hepatitis B).

The study findings emerged from a randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial conducted in 2007-2011, where researchers administered vitamin A at routine vaccination contacts among children aged 6-23 months in urban and rural Guinea-Bissau. A total of 2331 children were randomized to placebo, receiving either live vaccines only (MV or MV+YF) or a combination of live and inactivated vaccines (MV+DTP or MV+YF+pentavalent).

When mortality was compared, the adjusted mortality rate ratio (MRR) for co-administered live and inactivated vaccines compared with live vaccines only was over three times greater (3.24 (1.20-8.73). When MV+YF+pentavalent was compared with MV+YF only, the adjusted MRR was almost eight times greater (7.73 (1.79-33.4)) for the combination of the three vaccines versus two.

The researchers concluded:

“In line with previous studies of DTP, the present results indicate that pentavalent vaccine co-administered with MV and YF is associated with increased mortality.”

Pentavalent and Yellow Fever Vaccines Already Linked To Fatalities

This finding takes on a more disturbing light when one considers that by the end of 2013, largely through the efforts of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI), pentavalent vaccines will have reached close to 200 million children in 72 developing countries. GAVI also states that yellow fever vaccines have been administered to 60 million children, “averting an estimated 160,000 future deaths.” Pentavalent vaccines have already created widespread controversy by being linked to clusters of infant deaths in every Southeast and South Asian country where they have been introduced, including Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and India. Similarly, yellow fever vaccines have been linked to deaths as far back as 2001, when 7 people were found contracting yellow fever and dying from the vaccine itself. The obvious question then emerges: Could both the pentavalent and yellow fever vaccines actually be increasing mortality despite GAVI’s position that they are a life-saving intervention that presumably should be administered to every at risk child in the developing world?

What adds additional weight to this concern is that there is already a well-established history of DTP (and oral polio) vaccines being linked to increased morbidity and mortality in low-income countries, starting with this 2000 BMJ article also in a population of vaccinated infants from Guinea-Bissau that found recipients of one dose of DTP or polio vaccines had higher mortality than children who had received none of these vaccines. A 2011 study of Guinea-Bissau females found DTP vaccine administered simultaneously with measles vaccine is associated with increased morbidity and poor growth in girls.[iv] Clearly the vaccines can cause significant harm. Another far more recent study published this year in the journal Tropical Medicine and International Health found that DTP vaccination is responsible for higher mortality among Indian girls. Another 2005 study on vaccinated female infants in India found that those who receive both the tuberculosis vaccine Bacillus Calmette – Guérin (BCG) and DTP experience significantly higher mortality than those who receive only one of the two vaccines.[v]

Given the multitude of studies showing vaccine-induced harm, including increased infant mortality, especially for DTP vaccines, one wonders how global vaccination campaigns can blatantly promote them as infallibly effective and extremely safe.

Evidence That Vaccines Are Toxic Exposures

It has been hypothesized that this association with DTP vaccines and increased mortality may be due to the Th2-polarising effect of the aluminum phosphate adjuvant in the vaccine, as well as the chronic inflammation caused by the intramuscular administration of the vaccine at the site of injection, [vi] but another obvious explanation is that the vaccines themselves are toxic exposures, with the more vaccines given to infants the higher the likelihood of synergistic toxicity and resultant morbidity and mortality.

Exactly this possibility was raised by a 2011 study published in the journal Human and Experimental Toxicology titled, “Infant mortality rates regressed against number of vaccine doses routinely given: Is there a biochemical or synergistic toxicity?”,[vii] which brought to the fore the fact that, “The infant mortality rate (IMR) is one of the most important indicators of the socio-economic well-being and public health conditions of a country. The US childhood immunization schedule specifies 26 vaccine doses for infants aged less than 1 year-the most in the world-yet 33 nations have lower IMRs.” The study found that there is a highly statistically significant correlation between increasing number of vaccine doses and increasing infant mortality rates.

With the ongoing expansion of immunization schedules in the U.S. and globally, justified by the idea that more vaccines, and more vaccine antigens combined within each injection, will confer greater overall benefit to health (that far outweigh the risks of the vaccines themselves), and by ‘vaccine safety’ spokespersons such as Paul Offit claiming as many as 10,000 vaccines can be administered to a child at once safely, this new study indicates quite the opposite is true.

References

[i] Ane Bærent Fisker, Henrik Ravn, Amabelia Rodrigues, Marie Drivsholm Ostergaard, Carlito Bale, Christine Stabell Benn, Peter Aaby. Co-administration of live measles and yellow fever vaccines and inactivated pentavalent vaccines is associated with increased mortality compared with measles and yellow fever vaccines only. An observational study from Guinea-Bissau. Vaccine. 2013 Dec 7. pii: S0264-410X(13)01663-0. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2013.11.074.

[ii] J Agergaard, E Nante, G Poulstrup, J Nielsen, K L Flanagan, L Østergaard, C S Benn, P Aaby.Diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine administered simultaneously with measles vaccine is associated with increased morbidity and poor growth in girls. A randomised trial from Guinea-Bissau. Vaccine. 2011 Jan 10;29(3):487-500. Epub 2010 Nov 18. PMID:21093496

[iii] Peter Aaby, Sidu Biai, Jens Erik Veirum, Morten Sodemann, Ida Lisse, May-Lill Garly, Henrik Ravn, Christine Stabell Benn, Amabelia Rodrigues. DTP with or after measles vaccination is associated with increased in-hospital mortality in Guinea-Bissau. Vaccine. 2007 Jan 26;25(7):1265-9. Epub 2006 Oct 18.

[iv] J Agergaard, E Nante, G Poulstrup, J Nielsen, K L Flanagan, L Østergaard, C S Benn, P Aaby. Diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine administered simultaneously with measles vaccine is associated with increased morbidity and poor growth in girls. A randomised trial from Guinea-Bissau. Vaccine. 2011 Jan 10;29(3):487-500. Epub 2010 Nov 18. PMID:21093496

[v] Lawrence H Moulton, Lakshmi Rahmathullah, Neal A Halsey, R D Thulasiraj, Joanne Katz, James M Tielsch. Evaluation of non-specific effects of infant immunizations on early infant mortality in a southern Indian population. Trop Med IntHealth. 2005 Oct;10(10):947-55. PMID: 16185228

[vi] Mogens Helweg Claesson. Immunological Links to Nonspecific Effects of DTwP and BCG Vaccines on Infant Mortality. J Trop Med. 2011 ;2011:706304. Epub 2011 May 5. PMID: 21760811

[vii] Neil Z Miller, Gary S Goldman. Infant mortality rates regressed against number of vaccine doses routinely given: Is there a biochemical or synergistic toxicity? Hum Exp Toxicol. 2011 May 4. Epub 2011 May 4. PMID: 21543527

Should we hold those vaccinated against pertussis legally liable for whooping cough outbreaks?

Toni Bark, MD
Green Med Info
Tue, 03 Dec 2013 01:00 CST

The recent news articles to hit the mainstream media in the past week finally states what public health officials and epidemiologists have known for some time: those vaccinated against pertussis are carrying and spreading the bacteria and are responsible for most of the outbreaks.

This news raises the question:

Should we hold those vaccinated with the pertussis vaccine, legally liable for outbreaks?

And, if you look up scholarly articles about previous outbreaks of measles, you’ll find academic papers on an entity termed “the paradox of measles“; a paradox because those vaccinated are the ones contracting the disease whilst the unvaccinated in many communities with outbreaks, are unscathed.

In addition, the rise in shingles over the past decade or so, is due to the chicken pox vaccine. This link is not denied in academic literature and was even predicted by mathematical biologists and epidemiologists, and was confirmed by another study funded by the CDC.

If vaccinated children and adults are capable of spreading disease, shall we hold them and their parents legally liable for outbreaks? Shall we mandate ‘unvaccination’ as a requirement for public school? Since we can’t ‘unvaccinate,’ shall vaccinated children be kicked out of public school?

While the above statements seem absurd, they are equivalent arguments bioethicist, Art Caplan has and continues to make.

Caplan believes parents of unvaccinated children should be held legally liable for outbreaks of disease.

Mind you, Caplan is no regular academic bioethicist, he is a bioethicist who has made a good deal of money for writing pro-industry speak.

If you read about Art Caplan and his direct financial conflicts of interest, you’ll also read Art believes these financial conflicts can be managed while producing unbiased work. He and his previous institution of employment, the University of Pennsylvania Department of Bioethics received mega fees from major pharmaceutical companies and the department of vaccine bioethics at U Penn was massively funded by the big vaccine producers.

In addition to the DTap rendering recipients colonized with pertussis bacteria, consider the following;

a) Recently vaccinated children must be kept away from cancer patients lest they shed vaccine virus.

b) The oral polio vaccine was the cause of all polio cases in the US for several decades until, finally, the vaccine industry had a vaccine to replace it with.

c) The nasal flu vaccine renders the recipient shedding viruses for several days.

d) The rotavirus vaccine is shed in the recipient’s stool causing diarrhea in other children.

The above examples are just a few of how the recently vaccinated can shed pathogens and hence spread diseases.

So while the mainstream media is waking up to the realities of vaccination and outbreaks, shall we turn on all those who chose to vaccinate and make them pariahs?

I think the freedom to choose the risks vs benefits of vaccinating should be left to the consumer and not dictated by those with conflicts of interest.

Toni Bark, M.D. (LEED AP) graduated from Rush Medical College in Chicago, Illinois in 1986. Dr. Bark has been medical director for various departments and hospitals and has extensive post residency training in aesthetic medicine, nutritional medicine, and classical homeopathy with the top trainers in the various fields. Learn more about her work on her websitehttp://www.disease-reversal.com.

Hypertension Guidelines Can Be Eased, Panel Says

By GINA KOLATA

Published: December 18, 2013

New guidelines suggest that people over 60 can have a higher blood pressure than previously recommended before starting treatment to lower it. The advice, criticized by some physicians, changes treatment goals that have been in place for more than 30 years.

Until now, people were told to strive for blood pressures below 140/90, with some taking multiple drugs to achieve that goal. But the guidelines committee, which spent five years reviewing evidence, concluded that the goal for people over 60 should be a systolic pressure of less than 150. And the diastolic goal should remain less than 90.

Systolic blood pressure, the top number, indicates the pressure on blood vessels when the heart contracts. Diastolic, the bottom number, refers to pressure on blood vessels when the heart relaxes between beats.

Essentially, the committee determined that there was not strong evidence for the blood pressure targets that had been guiding treatment, and that there were risks associated with the medications used to bring pressures down.

The committee, composed of 17 academics, was tasked with updating guidelines last re-examined a decade ago. Their report was published online on Wednesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

Hypertension experts said they did not have a precise figure on how many Americans would be affected by the new guidelines. But Dr. William B. White, the president of the American Society of Hypertension, said it was “a huge number for sure.” He estimated that millions of people over 60 had blood pressures between 140 and 150. Dr. Paul A. James, the chairman of the department of family medicine at the University of Iowa and co-chairman of the guidelines committee, said, “If you get patients’ blood pressure below 150, I believe you are doing as well as can be done based on scientific evidence.”

The group added that people over 60 who are taking drugs and have lowered their blood pressure to below 150 can continue taking the medications if they are not experiencing side effects.

But, it cautioned, although efforts to lower blood pressure have had a remarkable effect, reducing the incidence of strokes and heart disease, there is a difference between lowering blood pressure with drugs and having lower pressure naturally.

Medications that lower blood pressure can have effects that counteract some of the benefits, said Dr. Suzanne Oparil, a co-chairwoman of the committee and director of the vascular biology and hypertension program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine. For that reason, maximum benefits may occur with less intense treatment and higher blood pressure.

“The mantra of blood pressure experts in the past has been that lower is better,” Dr. Oparil said. “Recent studies don’t seem to support that.”

For example, two Japanese studies in older people found that those who reduced their systolic pressure to less than 140 fared no better than those who reduced it to between 140 and 160, or between 140 and 149.

“We have this notion that if we can get blood pressure to normal, we will have the most health benefits,” Dr. James said. “That’s not necessarily true.”

For people younger than 60, the goal remains blood pressure under 140/90. The panel decided to keep that target because it could not find rigorous studies that established systolic blood pressure goals for younger people.

When blood pressure guidelines were first formulated in 1977, the committee only looked at diastolic pressure. “People thought systolic should be 100 plus your age,” Dr. Oparil said. “That was old folk medicine.”

Observational studies then found that systolic pressure was a better predictor of consequences like strokes. Researchers began to test the effects of lowering systolic blood pressure, but their studies excluded younger people because they were looking for outcomes, like strokes or heart failure, that are more common in older people. As a result, there are no good studies showing that younger people benefit from taking drugs to achieve a particular systolic pressure.

Some experts not on the committee said that the blood pressure guidelines were based on limited science — studies did not specifically test the effects of getting blood pressure below 140/90 — but that this did not mean the goal should be abandoned.

“When I discuss this with my colleagues and friends in the community, most are pretty livid,” said Dr. George Bakris, the director of the hypertension center at the University of Chicago. “Is this the golden age of Sparta? What is going on?”

The old blood pressure targets made a huge difference in patients’ health, said Dr. Marvin Moser, a hypertension expert, who was the chairman of the first blood pressure guidelines committee in 1977 and a member of the six committees after that, but not of the most recent one.

“The thing about hypertension is that it is a dull disease, but the results of treatment are spectacular,” he said. The incidence of strokes has fallen by 70 percent since 1972, and heart failure rates have fallen more than 50 percent.

“It used to be that every third or fourth hospital bed had someone with hypertension in it,” Dr. Moser said. “Today it is very rare to find someone with malignant hypertension” — that is, dangerously high and uncontrolled blood pressure.

It is inexpensive now to treat the disorder, Dr. Moser added, because 90 percent of blood pressure drugs are available as generics.

But, Dr. James said, some people may be better off taking fewer drugs or lower doses. Many older people take multiple medications, which can interact and potentially cause harm, he said.

Some people, too, end up with blood pressures so low when they stand that they get dizzy.

“A lady who gets dizzy and falls and fractures her hip — that’s a terrible thing,” Dr. James said.

The guidelines committee’s paper is accompanied by three editorials, two of which praise the process and note the rigor with which the group assessed evidence.

The third — by Dr. Eric D. Peterson of Duke University, Dr. J. Michael Gaziano of the VA Boston Healthcare System and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Dr. Philip Greenland of Northwestern University — said the committee should have considered evidence that fell short of randomized, controlled clinical trials.

“We’re not starting from square one,” Dr. Gaziano said in a telephone interview. “We’ve got a history of how to manage patients. The bar for changing that should be pretty high.”

Dr. Bakris said that the committee was merely proposing guidelines, and that doctors should continue to use their judgment.

“These are not stone tablets of Moses,” he said.

But, the writers of the critical editorial noted, doctors today are expected to follow performance measures.

Half of people taking drugs do not achieve the current goal of blood pressure under 140/90, and the writers expressed concern that with the new, more lenient target, patients’ blood pressures would edge even higher.

Increased Risk of Autism May Be Linked To Labor Induction and Augmentation

 

 By Joanne Van Zuidam | Posted: August 13, 2013

Summary: A study from researchers at Duke Medicine Medical Center and the University of Michigan found that autism may be associated with induced and augmented labor — but the research does not prove causation. Authors say that doctors shouldn’t change the way they manage labor and delivery based on their study, as additional research is needed.

A large, retrospective study, funded by the Environmental Protection Agency and published in JAMA Pediatrics, did not show a causal relationship between autism and labor induction or augmentation. However it did find a link, which researchers suggests warrants further study to explore potential explanations of the association (like underlying pregnancy conditions along with the events of labor and delivery) — especially since both procedures are frequently used in the delivery room. Watch this video to learn more:

Inducing labor (stimulating contractions before the onset of spontaneous labor) and augmenting labor (increasing the strength, duration or frequency of contractions during labor) have been shown to prevent complications, including stillbirth—but both interventions have been previously suggested as contributing factors to autism in smaller, inconclusive studies.

In this study, the largest of its kind, the research team reviewed birth records in North Carolina during an eight-year period, matching 625,042 births with corresponding public school records to determine which children were diagnosed with autism.

Findings showed about 1.3 percent of male children and 0.4 percent of female children received autism diagnoses. Among those children, the percentage of mothers who had induced or augmented labor was higher compared to the mothers of children who did not have autism. The estimated increase in risk took maternal and pregnancy-related risk factors (such as maternal age, socio-economic status, and pregnancy complications) into consideration.

Male infants faced a higher risk from both augmented and induced labor, with results suggesting a 35 percent higher risk of autism compared to births that didn’t require either intervention. However, only augmentation was associated with increased risk among female children. Researchers said the reason for the difference in findings between male and female children requires further investigation.

While this study provides preliminary evidence of an association between autism and labor induction/augmentation, the researchers caution that the results are preliminary.

“Additional studies are needed to differentiate among potential explanations of the association, such as underlying pregnancy conditions requiring the eventual need to induce/augment, the events of labor and delivery associated with induction/augmentation, and the specific treatments and dosing used to induce/augment labor (e.g., exogenous oxytocin and prostaglandins),” said Marie Lynn Miranda, PhD, senior author and dean of the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment.

The authors also stress that these findings be balanced with the benefits of induction and augmentation of labor.

Three More Things to Read: 

• Labor Induction
• The Induction Option
• Labor Augmentation: Giving Your Labor a Boost